Which Word?

This is another activity to use after you’ve asked a story in order to get more reps out of the target structures. It’s pretty basic, but it can not be done easily on the same day that the story is asked.

Have the students read a typed out script of the story, either projected or printed, depending on the resources that are available to you.

Then, give students a script in which all of the target structures (and all forms of the target structures) are eliminated and replaced with spaces. This is very easy to do using word processing programs by using the “Find and Replace” option: just type in each target structure once and have the program find and replace all instances with a line ______. If you plan to project this version, you probably want to number each of the spaces. If students are working with a print copy, it’s not necessary.

Then, simply tell students that all of the target structures are missing from the story, and they need to fill them in using the correct form of the structure. Here is an example from Búscalo:

I have the list of target structures posted on the board in the form in which they were originally presented (usually third person, but sometimes other forms–for our last story, they had ‘s/he looks for, s/he finds, you know’